San Diego

GOOD NEWS: PIPPIN‘S A PIP Some shows stay young by never growing up: With a book by Roger O. Hirson, this 1972 hit show originally directed by Bob Fosse is the perfect example of a musical that’s saved by its spirit and songs — those cheeky and sophisticated tunes by Stephen Schwartz got more than…

DIAGNOSIS: DANCER Human nature loves to ponder the impossible to answer: What does food taste like to other people? What does a colorblind person imagine color looks like? What is it like to be inside the mind of someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)? There may never be a show about the first two, but…

BREWING UP SOME GOOD CHUCKLES IN THEIR KITCHEN Cooking shows are typically feel-good shows. The calm of Martha Stewart. The sweetness of Rachel Rae. The edge of Emeril Lagasse. Of course, it’s easy for them to make everything appear to go well on those high-budget programs; editing allows blunders to be reset and re-shot. So…

THESE PASSENGERS WON’T STAY IN THEIR SEATS! Die-hard fans of So You Think You Can Dance get to know their choreographers. For me, there was Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) : and then there was everyone else. Her startling juxtapositions, demanding symmetry, and physical boundary pushing was unmatched by others. Until now. Now, there…

WHEN KING WAS THE QUEEN OF THE COURT Ask most people what they know about Billy Jean King, other than fact that she played tennis, and there’s a good likelihood that you’ll hear a story about Bobby Riggs. Anna Deavere Smith’s play turns that inside out by focusing on almost everything but that to show…

“You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.” — Eleanor Roosevelt Eleanor at the North Coast Repertory Theatre is a one-woman drama that condenses the life of Eleanor Roosevelt into a glowing portrait of one of America’s great ladies. Running barely 85 minutes with no intermission, each minute is…

AS IF TELENOVELAS WEREN’T MELODRAMATIC ENOUGH FOR YA’… As someone who blew off after-school activities because he just couldn’t miss General Hospital (in the grand days of Luke and Laura vs. Elizabeth Taylor), I’m not in a position to cast stones at the many flaws of telenovelas. Quality or not, the format is opium to…

XANA-DOOZY OF A MUSICAL Playwrights of musicals have frequently, with varying degrees of success, taken a successful non-musical movie and worked it into a staged musical. Billy Elliott, Waitress, and Mean Girls are among many movies given a whole new life on stage through song and dance. What makes 1980s’ Xanadu a very different case,…

VISHNU WERE HERE First, a little history lesson:   In the Hindu religion, the god Vishnu incarnated ten times as different “avatara,” which can be interpreted different ways, including “descendent.”   The final incarnation, calling himself Kalki, came to end a long period of darkness, degeneration, and chaos. While knowing this is not critical to following Aditi…

THIS SHOW IS MURDER The latest production at North Coast Rep is a stage adaption of Dame Agatha Christie’s 1923 detective novel Murder on the Links. Originally titled The Murder on the Links, it was the second novel to star the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot. The eccentric Poirot became one of the most popular…

ANNA MIKAMI ALREADY WELL-SEASONED IN HER THEATRICAL DEBUT For theatergoers who have been waiting impatiently for a new play about monosodium glutamate, your wish has been answered. Check out the world premiere of Keiko Green’s new work at the Old Globe, called Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play. Anna Mikami as Ami and Eunice Bae…

VISITING THE PAST FOR PRESENT LAUGHTER If you’re looking to expose yourself to the plays of Noël Coward, this is where to start. Not only did he write Present Laughter (in six days!) to amuse himself AND create the main character based on himself, but he even chose to play Garry in the original London…

WE BUILT THIS SILLY ON ROCK AND ROLL Most musicals start with a premise, develop a plot, and then write songs to fit the themes. Rock of Ages flips the process by starting with classic rock songs of the 1980s (Styx, Journey, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Steve Perry, Poison, and more) and tying…

THE BLOSSOMS DO EVENTUALLY BLOOM IN THIS ORCHARD Russian playwright Anton Chekhov believed his classic 1904 drama The Cherry Orchard was a comedy bordering on farce, but generations of audiences, scholars, and reviewers have leaned toward the play (as well Chekhov’s other major works for the stage) as melancholy pieces filled with frustrated characters enduring…

LIFE AIN’T JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES IN 1903 RUSSIA Written and set in 1903 Russia, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard would be the master playwright’s final creation. Unless one already has knowledge of that time and place, the play — even with North Coast Rep‘s superlative production — becomes much easier to understand and…

 ¡JUGAR A LA PELOTA! Under A Baseball Sky is a likable new play by José Cruz González now nearing the end of a five-week run at the Old Globe Theatre. It’s tight work, running about 90 minutes without an intermission. The comparative brevity still allows the playwright to touch a number of themes, several of them of the…

ANOTHER FEATHER IN MOXIE’S CAP Playwright Anna Ouyang Moench uses the setting of a wooded area — beautifully designed at MOXIE Theatre by Robin Sanford Roberts — as the backdrop of this beautiful family drama. The father, John (Mike Sears), is just about equally bound to his liberal and earth-loving principles, his love of bird-watching,…